How to Collect Payments from Landscaping Customers

Payment collection in the green industry requires balancing payment policy enforcement with maintaining positive customer relationships. To ensure customer satisfaction and consistent cash flow, getting the right balance is critical for service providers. 

Common payment collection challenges in the landscaping industry include:

• Issuing timely and accurate invoices

• Communicating payment expectations

• Dealing with late-payment or no-payment customers

This guide offers strategies for landscaping businesses to improve invoicing and accounts receivable processes. 

Set clear payment terms

Set clear payment terms so customers know your expectations. Feature these terms prominently on your invoice. Common lawn care business and landscape payment terms include:

• Due upon completion: Full project cost is due upon project completion.

• 50% due upfront and 50% upon completion: Initial deposit secures the job, with the remainder due at project completion.

• Net payments: Clients pay their balance within a certain number of days from the invoice date. Common options include net-15 and net-30. 

• Progress payments: Request payments at regular intervals or certain milestones throughout the project. 

• Monthly retainer: Clients pay a fixed fee for ongoing lawn care service contracts.

Providing flexible payment terms enables you to meet diverse business needs and customer preferences. 

Offer convenient payment options

Offering online bill pay for landscaping and lawn care customers is critical to delivering exceptional customer experiences. 

Aspire’s customer portal enables customers to view and pay invoices at their convenience with most forms of payment, including:

• Credit card

• Debit card

• eCheck or ACH bank transfer 

This offers convenience, speeds up the payment process, and improves cash flow for your business.

Use the Aspire Mobile App for customers who prefer to pay with cash or check in the field. The app instantly records payments and updates your lawn care company’s financial information. 

Create detailed invoices

Send customers detailed invoices with the following information:

• Descriptions of work performed

• Quantities of materials used

• Rates for services

• Applicable taxes and fees

• Total amount due

• Payment terms

• Accepted payment methods

Invoice accuracy and clarity help prevent customer disputes or payment processing delays. Many landscape companies use invoicing software to save time on billing and reduce manual errors. 

Aspire’s intuitive invoicing assistant improves account visibility, making it easy to identify past-due balances. This improves cash flow while reducing your team's time spent sending invoices every month. 

The software enables users to:

• Generate and distribute invoices based on customers’ billing preferences and desired payment schedules

• Visually track outstanding invoices by color to ensure nothing falls through the cracks

• Search, filter, and view aging balances by customer

• Add payment or credit memos

Aspire also syncs directly with popular accounting platforms, including QuickBooks and Acumatica. This allows users to create deposits for paid invoices, which populate directly in their accounting system with a one-way data push, ensuring accurate financials across platforms.

Implement payment policies

Institute payment policies to enforce terms and procedures consistently. This encourages clients to comply with the agreed-upon payment schedule while empowering your billing team to promptly address late or missed payments. 

Consider the following:

• Early-payment discounts: Incentivize prompt payments by offering a discount for settling invoices before the due date.

• Late-payment penalties: Discourage late payments by outlining a fee structure for overdue invoices.

• Procedures for handling delinquent accounts: Define how your landscaping company handles unpaid accounts, such as stop-work orders, late-payment notices, or legal action, depending on the severity of the delinquency.

Outline payment policies in service agreements or contracts to build trust and avoid misunderstandings.

Follow up on outstanding payments

While payment terms and policies deter delinquencies, late payments still happen. Use follow-up invoice reminders to nudge customers with unpaid accounts politely. 

Reduce the hassle by leveraging Aspire to filter past-due invoices and then send batch invoice reminders with just a few clicks. Add notes to the invoices to personalize communications. 

If invoice reminders don’t work, instruct customer service representatives to conduct outbound calls to collect payments and enact your late-payment policies if needed. No one likes chasing down payments, but the process is critical for maintaining a steady cash flow. 

Best practices for billing landscaping customers

Take these steps to improve your billing process:

• Streamline invoicing with landscape business management software

• Automate invoice follow-up reminders

• Incentivize early payments and penalize late ones

• Provide multiple payment methods

• Establish clear channels for customer billing inquiries

• Foster long-term relationships with loyal customers

Review billing processes regularly to identify areas for improvement, such as automation opportunities or adjusting payment terms.

Invest in the right landscape invoicing tools

Landscape business software with invoicing features streamlines payment collection and gives managers greater visibility into existing, closed, and past-due accounts. 

Aspire customers ensure invoices and payments never get overlooked with visual invoice tracking and management, including electronic delivery and secure payment acceptance via a customer portal. The Aspire Mobile app allows field techs to accept credit card payments.

In addition, the powerful platform optimizes key business operation functions, from scheduling and job costing to reporting and payroll. Aspire’s end-to-end business management platform improves control over every aspect of your operations, fueling lasting growth through:

• Efficient workflows

• Real-time business insights 

• At-a-glance performance dashboards

• Profit maximization

According to data analysis from the 2023 LM150 list, Aspire clients grow their landscaping business two times faster than their counterparts, at an average rate of 23% year over year.

Ready to optimize your invoicing process? Request an Aspire demo today.